Although the De Spains, father and son, appear often in Faulkner's fictions, his novels provide few details about them or their plantation. Since Ratliff's account of Ab Snopes' experience with de Spain in The Hamlet is essentially a summary of the story Faulkner told in "Barn Burning," we have set the De Spain property in the same place as the editors of that story did. But it has to be acknowledged that even in the short story, there is no clear indication of where De Spain's property lies in Yoknapatawpha. Our speculation is also based on the fact that Jody Varner has not previously heard what Ratliff tells him, which suggests the events occurred on the opposite side of the county. In The Town, we learn simply that De Spain is "living alone in his late father's big wooden house with a cook an a houseman in a white coat" (14).